What the umbrella company bashers just don't get

Getting to grips with how a brolly operates is the key to avoiding any nasty surprises.

Contractors' Questions: Why can't I contract through my partner's 'Ltd'?

'However you dip your toe into contracting will see the taxman's hands on your money.'

Cheques to go through within one working day

Digital imaging boosts the prospects (and clearing times) of paper payments.

Contractors' Questions: Why can't I contract through my partner's 'Ltd'?

'However you dip your toe into contracting will see the taxman's hands on your money.'

NHS deems its entire PSC workforce inside IR35

Off-payroll angst hits fever pitch on the health service, as compulsion replaces choice.

Contractors' Questions: What to make of NHS's blanket IR35 decision?

Compliance expert replies to a contractor hit by the health service's 'inside IR35' decision.

Agencies in final push to fix IR35 'anomalies'

Recruiters ask MPs if next week's IR35 reform is a baby too big for its pram.

What's still wrong with the IR35 digital tool

Eight areas where the ESS falls down and needs fixing.

Making Tax Digital delay 'does not go far enough'

Chancellor's concession is welcomed, but reservations remain over MTD's cost, timing and use.

Contractors' Questions: Can I claim expenses if extended at 24 months?

The 40% rule seems to save a PSC in breach of the 24-month rule.

Contractors' Questions: Do offshore rules stop agencies engaging me?

Why UK employment intermediary regs may be keeping a non-UK PSC at bay.

Contractors' Questions: Is brolly PAYE the same as agency PAYE?

How Pay-As-You-Earn fluctuates between umbrellas, recruiters and end-users.

HR staff fear for public bodies over IR35 change

A real disruptor for their organisation is just a fortnight away, say nine in 10 officers.

Umbrella or PSC inside IR35: which is better?

Post-April 6th and where IR35 applies to your public sector role, the winner is...

So you want to save tax using an umbrella company pension?

April showers on PSCs make payroll firms' pensions a tax shelter worth exploring.

'Reasonable care' clause put into new IR35 legislation

Final set of April 6th rules outlaws clients from making blanket IR35 assessments.

Contractors' Questions: Should I get a second IR35 opinion?

What to do when you haven't rejected or accepted HMRC's 'inside' assessment.

Why 1,796 defunct PSCs may be just the start

Will April's IR35 legislation leave more PSCs in its wake than last April's T&S rules?

Hammond cancels NI hike on self-employed

Red-faced chancellor shreds his plan to raid freelancers from 2019.

New guide unveiled on Flat Rate VAT changes

Get the official word on whether you're a limited cost trader, and likely to pay more VAT.

Contractors' Questions: Can my PSC break UK law in a foreign country?

Legal reassurance, of sorts, for a firm set to flout British law outside of Britain.

Contractors' Questions: Is my agency deceiving me about IR35 reform?

Status expert helps a PSC stung by feeling his recruiter is work-shy.

Agencies slash PSCs' pay rates, insist on umbrellas

Convert to a brolly and so pay more tax than inside IR35, or be gone, PSCs told.

PSC exodus to hit public projects, say nine in 10

Almost all contractors fear walking out before April will hurt taxpayer-funded bodies.

Free webinar on the new IR35 -- in force on April 6th

Get tailored help on the off-payroll rules, to work out what 23 days' time means for you.

Dividend changes to net Hammond £2.7billion

Budget's biggest windfall is by setting the break-evens at £2,000, £8,667 and £10,092.

PM steps in over Hammond's NIC hike

Theresa May's intervention is welcomed, yet up to £700 more in Class 4 is still incoming.

5 Secrets to Motivating Yourself

What do you do when you’re feeling kind of blah and can’t seem to shake it?

Do you have ways to snap out of those moods and create a sense of drive and purpose?

If yes, keep doing what you’re doing (and leave a comment at the end of this post with your secrets).

If you’re like most of us, you may need a little extra help to get your mojo movin’ again.

Here are five ways to inspire yourself:

1. Focus on the Future

If you dwell on the past, or even your current problems or situation, it’s easy to get down on yourself. Why not shift gears and focus on the future?

If today is not going so well, what can you do tomorrow to make it better? When you switch your focus to the future, you begin to see the world of possibilities that are open to you. Possibilities can lead to positivity, and that can lead to hope, which is what can inspire us and lift us up when we’re feeling down.

But just don’t dream about the future. Make a plan to make the bright future that you aspire to come into reality. That process of visioning and planning and action always works to bring results.

It may not bring you that dream job right away, but you will be moving in the right direction toward it if you start focusing on what is possible.

2. Read All About it

There are so many inspirational people who have written their stories and pointed the way for all of us. And at some point they were down on themselves and could not see the way forward.

One of the greatest leaders of our times, Nelson Mandela, spent 27 years in prison, most of it in the notorious Robbin Island prison until his release in 1990 after an international campaign against apartheid and his imprisonment.

If you read his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, you will hear about his long time in prison and the deprivations he suffered. But he never gave up his hope for freedom for himself and his people.

Now that’s inspiring. And there are thousands of books that tell similar stories of remarkable courage and inner strength that can help you find what you need inside of yourself to move forward.

There are people who rose out of the slums to become millionaires and women and men who were severely injured in accidents or wars who became world class athletes. Find a story that resonates with you and draw from their inspiration to inspire yourself.

3. Find a Role Model

When we were kids we often looked up and even admired certain people who inspired us. This might have included professional football stars or famous musicians or actors.

But it also probably included someone who was a little bit older than us who seemed like they had things together. It may have even been our parents or an older brother or sister.

We closely watched what they did, and we mimicked their actions and behavior because we wanted to be just like them. Having a role model as an adult is kind of the same thing, except for the hero worship. And it too can work to help inspire us.

Find someone in your life, or maybe at work, who seems like they have everything that you want. Then ask them how they got where they are today.

They will probably be happy to talk about themselves for a few minutes, but don’t be surprised to hear them say that they were exactly where you are at one point in their life. Take their story and their success with you and use it as your inspiration.

4. Act as If

One of the best ways to inspire yourself is to start acting as if you were already successful, popular, slimmer or whatever you would like to be. This time the self-inspiration might actually come from perspiration as you take actions that you hope will lead you where you want to go.

Let’s say you want to be in better physical shape. You can start with the motivation of good health and feeling better about yourself. But what might actually get you to the gym will be acting as if you were already healthier, and a healthy person just goes to the gym naturally.

It’s a bit of a ninja mind trick, but it can work to give you that spark of inspiration and when you add the perspiration you have the formula for success. As you make better choices, your self-worth rises.

When that happens, you automatically take the actions that you know you should be doing. That’s the magic of inspiring yourself.

5. Take a Break and Re-energize

Sometimes a completely different tactic is required in order to inspire yourself. If you are feeling down, you may be just tired and overwhelmed. Try taking a weekend off, just for yourself.

If you have to go away to make that happen, take the time off. You are worth it. While you’re away or just relaxing, you can take stock of your life — the good and the bad. You can examine what is working well and what needs to be fixed.

Try to have as much alone time as you can during this respite, and listen to your inner voice. It may be telling you to slow down or change careers to fix your relationships.

Just listen. You don’t have to do anything. Sometimes the inspiration to fix our problems or embark on a new adventure is already there waiting for us to pay attention. You may already have the inspiration you need inside of you. All you have to do is to let it out.

—

Inspiring yourself helps you grow and change. It can also just get you through a tough task. Regardless, it’s a great skill to have. How do you inspire yourself?

(Photo Credit: Steve Wilson)

Popular search terms for this article:

mike martin work awesome

The Solution to a Smarter Supply Chain

The supply chain is both an integral asset and an ongoing obstacle. Without one it would be impossible for businesses, companies, and corporations to produce and distribute their goods. But in any industry and on every scale, the average supply chain is overwhelmed with inefficiencies, malfunctions, and setbacks.

Trying to transform the supply chain from the headache it commonly is into the tool that everyone wants it to be is a challenge that has received a phenomenal amount of attention and effort. In spite of that, no one has discovered the silver bullet that can resolve all problems in any supply chains. More commonly, the process has been characterized by progress on one front being canceled out by failures on another.

Now that technologies like supply chain ERP have reached maturity, a solution to a smarter supply chain has finally presented itself. But rather than coming in the form of a single tool or capability, the most successful supply chains share the same characteristic — transparency.

When enterprises are able to get a top-down perspective over the supply chain while also gaining the means to take a deep look into any and every detail of the supply chain, the kinds of issues that have historically created impediments are minimized. Transparency ensures that a complex system does not inevitably become a confusing one. To underscore just how significant a solution transparency in the supply chain really is, just consider some of the benefits that apply in all instances:

• Identify Inefficiency and Waste – These are the twin enemies of any supply chain. Once transparency is built into the system it become easy to identify rather than guess where the worst instances of inefficiency and waste are taking place and resolve them as quickly and completely as possible.

• Eliminate Delays and Setbacks – Most supply chains depend on having exact amounts of resources at a precise moment in time. As a result, when something is late, incorrect, or incomplete, it creates delays and setbacks that ripple through the supply chain. Transparency makes it easy to spot these kinds of issues before they have an actual impact.

• Introduce Scalability – Paradoxically, the success of a supply chain often leads it towards disaster. That is because trying to scale up capabilities quickly, carefully, and flexibly represents an enormous guessing game when so much of the supply chain operates out of sight. Transparency gives decision makers the means to identify exactly what needs to scale up, along with when, where, why, and how. It becomes possible to calibrate the supply chain to the exact needs of the enterprise.

• Enable Automation – Automation promises to revolutionize the average supply chain by lowering costs and standardizing outputs. The challenge is determining what can be automated, what cannot, and how those changes impact the supply chain as a whole. Transparency shines a light on the issue by identifying the kinds of routine inputs and outputs that that are easiest to automate or most necessary to automate.

• Save Time and Money – Transparency is not just about seeing everything. It is also about seeing the right things. The tools that make transparency possible also allow users to focus on metrics and moments that define the success or failure of the supply chain’s performance. Rather than digging through mountains of data, managers can instantly reference vital information, compile flexible reports, and track troubling trends in real time. That creates enormous potential to save time and cut costs.

If you are unsure whether your supply chain lacks the necessary transparency, ask yourself a simple question — can you account for all the performance failures your supply chain suffered from over the past year? If the answer is no, that means your supply chain is more shrouded in mystery than it should be. Transparency gives you the perspective you require to make meaningful improvements based on facts rather than guesses.

Hammond's dividend allowance cut 'devastating'

Varying levels of outcry reflect varying levels of tax, but your new liability is capped at £1,143.

What a contractors' IFA made of Budget 2017

Planning, info and advice are the best triple-lock to protect against Hammond's squeeze.

Budget 2017 bruises PSCs with dividend allowance cut

£3,000 tax rise per 'Ltd' seen as a lesser evil than extending off-payroll rules.

Budget 2017 -- chancellor's full speech

Philip Hammond delivers his first Budget, to prepare Britain for a 'fairer' future.

Budget 2017: how it'll hit contractor finances

IFA: Will the chancellor strike the right (or wrong) notes for your personal finances?

Consultancy moves to ban PSCs over IR35 change

Budget 2017 fears compel the first commercial outfit to begin banishing 'Ltd' workers.

IR35 digital tool is unlawful, taxman told

'Courts have already ruled against the flawed approach HMRC is still evolving.'

Why brollies aren't a must for IR35-caught PSCs

Contractors should look (at these figures) before they leap into an umbrella company before April 6th.

Hammond may extend off-payroll rules to private sector

Another expert says PSCs with commercial clients could be brought into scope on Wednesday.

Taxman finally unveils IR35 digital tool

Check your status for tax, invites HMRC, opening the ESS -- in all but name.

HMRC shifts IR35 decision, delays digital tool

‘Fee-payers must decide PSCs' status before using the later than promised ESS.'

What contractors can do if owed cash by closed Coal IT

Options are unfortunately few and far between for PSCs owed at least £250,000.

Public bodies unite to try to shelve IR35 changes

Local government leaders team up to push IR35 reforms back until October.

Budget 2017: what contractors can expect

The key announcements that brolly users and PSCs will hear from Hammond.